Can technology improve your trip? Meet Judy Williams. When she and her husband recently checked into Blu Hotel in Zurich, a clerk asked them to sign the dotted line on a room rate hundreds of dollars higher than their online offer.

    “It was not a cheap stay,” says Williams, a lawyer from Billings, Mont. But it became more of one after her husband fired up the Booking.com app he'd used to book their room on his smart phone. “As soon as we showed him the cost, he honored it,” Williams says.

    Technology may create challenges for travelers but it can also solve them. It's more than making sure of a hotel cost. The latest Booking.com can help users select hotels by location, make a secure booking and view the confirmed (已确认的) cost so they never need to re-discuss their hotel price.

    Another pain point for travelers is traffic that eats away precious vacation time. There's a new app called Commute which is aimed at users who have to make the same trip every day. But if you're headed to Los Angeles or Honolulu, where visitors can easily get stuck in hours of heavy traffic, Commute can help.         

    Just input basic information about your destination and expected leaving time, and the app will start sending you traffic information 15 minutes before you leave. Testing Commute proved to be a challenge for me, because my home address is about 900 miles from my place of work. But if you have only a short distance to travel through a heavily populated area, you can use Commute to avoid traffic jams.

    Another source of travel-related problems is money. That's particularly true when you're dealing with a foreign currency. The latest Travel Money Tracker helps travelers prevent currency mix-ups. It immediately changes a country's native currency to yours, so you know exactly how much that Espresso (浓咖啡) in Milan costs in dollars. It can also warn you when you're overspending, which can sometimes be a problem when you're on vacation. The only catch, of course, is that you have to remember to record all your purchases.

    Taken together, these apps solve some of the most common travel problems. But not all of them. Some things, no smart phone can fix, which means I get to keep my job – for now at least.

    Driving in Canada is similar to driving in many parts of the United States. Distances and speeds, however, are posted in kilometers per hour and some signs, particularly in Quebec, may only be in French.

    Unless otherwise posted, the maximum (最大限度的) speed limit in Canada is 50km/hr in cities and 80km/hr on highways. On rural highways, the posted speed limit may be 100km/hr. It is illegal to take automobile radar detectors (汽车雷达检测器) into Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and the Yukon. Seat belt use is required by law for all passengers, and child car seats must be used by children under 40 pounds. Some provinces require drivers to keep their vehicles' headlights on during the day and some have banned (禁止) driving while using a hand-held cell phone. Motorcycles cannot share a lane (车道), and safety helmets for motorcycle riders and passengers are necessary. Running a red light is a serious crime throughout Canada and drivers are advised to stop before starting when a light turns green.

    Winter travel can be dangerous due to heavy snowfalls and icy conditions. Some roads and bridges are often closed in winter. Snow tires are required in some provinces. Travelers should also be careful about animals while driving at night in rural areas.

    Highway 401, from Detroit to Montreal, is one of the busiest highways in North America. It has been the scene of many deadly traffic accidents due to sudden and severe weather changes, high rates of speed, and heavy truck traffic. Thus drivers should be alert while travelling here.

    Please refer to our Road Safety page for more information. Also, we suggest that you visit the website of Canada's national authority responsible for road safety.

    In cooperation with German experts, several scientists from the University of Bradford believe that they finally solved a mystery that has been confusing millions of people: why our hair turns gray with age.

    The researchers came up with their results by examining native hair and cells from human hair follicles（毛囊）. They say the secret turns out to be hidden in catalase（过氧化氢酶）, which is causing hair to turn gray.

    Catalase production goes down with age and stress, allowing hydrogen peroxide（过氧化氢） in the hair to do its favorite job—making hair gray, and then white, by blocking the normal production of melanin（黑色素）. Melanin is our hair's natural pigment that is responsible for the color of hair. It also determines the color of our eyes and skin.

    Dr. Gerald Weizmann, an editor of a journal, says," All of our hair cells make a tiny bit of hydrogen peroxide, but as we get older, this little bit becomes quite a lot, and our hair turns gray and then white."

    The new study brings hope for millions of people who have to color their hair: to finally obtain some shampoo that will decrease levels of hydrogen peroxide and therefore restore gray or white hair to its natural color or even prevent it from turning gray.

    The researchers are already conducting an experiment with such a drug on a few volunteers with gray hair and expect to get the results in the next two to three months. If everything works out, millions of people will choose between this drug and other previously used expensive dyes. However, even if the drug works, it will take at least several years before it can be brought to the market.

    Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York's public high schools has student newspapers – and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

    Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a 'whole article' sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places.”

    I am not nostalgic(怀旧的) about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock 'n' roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

    School newspapers are in decline(衰落) because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

    When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press' challenging, researching or slowing the message.

    But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.

    It's undeniable that spending time outdoors and in nature lifts our spirits and makes us feel more centered and at peace. When we breathe in fresh air, and enjoy the beauty of trees, streams and oceans, we naturally tend to feel more connected to ourselves and others.

Over the past decade, scientists have been exploring why nature — and dirt specifically — is such a powerful tool in improving our mood. According to researchers, the secret may lie in the microbes (微生物)of the soil. One bacterium specifically—-Mycobacterium Vaccae (M. Vaccae) —has been identified as having the power to affect our moods and cognitive function as well.

    Experiments conducted at Sage Colleges in New York found that contact with M. Vaccae can increase serotonin levels in the brain — a chemical that is associated with higher levels of happiness, increased focus, and reduced anxiety. In order to explore how the bacteria can improve learning, researchers Dory Mathews and Susan Jenks experimented with mice in a maze. Mice that ingested the bacteria navigated the maze twice as fast as the control group and proved less anxious as well.

    Humans can absorb M. Vaccae just by playing in the dirt. We take in it when we breathe, we consume it in organic vegetables, and it can also enter our bloodstream through skin contact, especially where we have open cuts. This may explain why children in school perform better after break.

    Neuroscientist Christopher Lowry at the University of Bristol in England believes that he has identified why this incredible bacterium works. "What we think happens is that the bacteria activate immune cells, which release chemicals called cytokines that then act on receptors on the sensory nerves to increase their activity.”

    Beyond the power of M. Vaceae, scientists have been proving for decades that exposure to dirt, and the huge number of microbes found in dirt, can strengthen our immune system. When our body comes into contact with bacteria, it stores die information in a type of library and can then use that information to fight sickness and infection more effectively.

    Happiness, focus, less anxiety… I'll take a double dose of dirt; please!

    What is eBay? The simple answer is that it is a global trading platform(贸易平台) where nearly anyone can trade practically anything. People can sell and buy all kinds of products and goods, including cars, movies and DVDs, sporting goods, travel tickets, musical instruments, clothes and shoes—the list goes on and on.

    The idea came from Peter Omidyar, who was born in Paris and moved to Washington when he was still a child. At high school, he became very interested in computer programming and after graduating from Tufts University in 1988, he worked for the next few years as a computer engineer. In his free time he started eBay as a kind of hobby, at first offering the service free by word of mouth. By 1996 there was so much traffic on the website that he had to upgrade(升级) and he began charging a fee to members. Joined by a friend, Peter Skill, and in 1998 by his capable CEO, Meg Whitman, he has never looked back. EBay has gone from strength to strength. It is now one of the ten most visited online shopping websites on the Internet.

    eBay sells connections, not goods, putting buyer and seller into contact with each other. All you have to do is make an e-photo, write a description, fill out a sales form and you are in business: the world is your market place. Of course for each item sold eBay gets a percentage and that is great deal of money. Every day there are more than sixteen million items listed on eBay and eighty percent of the items are sold.